Very often than not, instead of losing weight from exercise, they ended up gaining even more weight than before. Why is this so?

This is not surprising if we understand how the energy equation works. Whether we want to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, it is important to understand the connection between the energy our body takes in (food consumed) and the energy our body uses (physical activities). In order to lose weight, we need to use more calories than we take in. To maintain a healthy weight, we need to balance the calories we use with those we take in. If we take in more calories than our body needs, we will put on excess fat. If we expend more energy than we take in we will burn the excess fat.

Exercise plays an important role in weight control by increasing energy output. During the initial phase of exercise, the body uses the carbohydrates from the food consumed as the main source of energy. When all the carbohydrates are being used up, the body would then look for the excess fat store in the body for extra fuel. Recent studies have shown that not only does exercise increase metabolism during a workout, it also causes your metabolism to stay increased for a period of time after exercising, allowing you to burn more calories.

Thus, the intensity and duration of the exercise is also an important factor to determine how much calories are being used up. It will only be effective if we are able to burn those excess fats during our workout. How much exercise is needed to make a difference in our weight depends on the amount and type of activity, and on how much we consume. Aerobic exercises such as jogging, running, Taichi burn body fat effectively. However, many people always have the wrong mentality that they can afford to have a hearty meal and eat all they can after the workout, since they had already burnt so much calories, which very often the meal negate the effects of the workout.

Taking for instance, if we consume 150 excess calories a day, we will gain approximately 15 pounds in a year. We could take that weight off, or keep it off, by doing minimally 30 minutes of moderate light intensity exercise daily. The combination of exercise and diet offers one of the most flexible and effective approach towards weight control.

Muscle tissue is heavier than fat tissue, and through exercise, we tend to develop muscle to a certain degree. Thus, our normal bathroom weighing scale will not necessarily be able to tell whether or not we are “fat.” Individual with well toned and developed muscles, and with relatively little body fat, invariably are considered “overweight” according to standard weight charts. If we are engaging in a regular program of strength and resistance training, our muscles will increase in weight, causing our overall weight to increase. Therefore, looking at the body composition is a better indicator of how much fat we have than just looking at body weight alone. In today’s technology, we can easily find commercial weighing scales which are able to read our body water percentage, body fat, muscles and bone mass.

Lack of physical activity causes muscles to get soft, and if proper nutritional diet is not maintained, excess calories consumed is almost always stored as fat around the body. Those that were once actively engage in physically activities, who continue to eat as they always have after settling into sedentary lifestyles, tend to suffer from “creeping obesity.” Thus, exercise should be a lifelong activity and Taichi still remains as one of the best forms of lifelong exercise for all ages.

For the poor hopeless souls who have tried just about everything to lose weight, it’s hard to resist these “miracle” diets with their wild promises. They offer a ray of hope to those who are looking for fast cures to a weighty problem. However, what most people don’t know is that there are no instant ways to get rid of unwanted fat.

“Most books which start off by telling you they are breakthroughs are simply misinforming their readers because there are currently no breakthroughs in the weight loss field,” according to Dr. Jack Yetiv, a nutrition expert and pharmacologist. Just as it took years to build up that bulge, the same amount of time is needed to lose it.

“Many people are unsuccessful at losing weight because they get discouraged with the results. If you don’t have realistic expectations, it is easy to become frustrated. Becoming overweight is not an overnight phenomenon; it takes months, even years, to accumulate that added weight. Reversing the process takes an equal amount of time. You have to be willing to invest the time and effort if the weight you want to lose is body fat,” according to Consumer Guide’s “Cholesterol: Your Guide for a Healthy Heart.”

Diet programs that assure you of constant weight loss of more than two or three pounds a week without exercise or controlling your eating habits are not being completely honest. While it is possible to lose up to 10 or 20 pounds in a few days, what is lost is water not fat. This form of weight loss is not permanent and can easily be regained by drinking water. As such, it adds more insult to injury to a frustrated dieter who has spent a lot of time and money on a worthless remedy.

But what is even more alarming is the fact that certain diets are nutritionally unsound. That’s because they were developed by advertising experts rather than nutritionists. As Paul Insel and Wilton Roth said in “Core Concepts in Health:

“Another factor promoting diet and food faddism is the rapid proliferation of unqualified nutrition consultants. The California Council Against Health Fraud (CCAHF) noted that the number of ‘degree mills’ offering mail order diplomas in nutrition counseling is rapidly increasing. Graduates advertise themselves as ‘nutritional consultants’ with academic credentials when they are nothing more than salespeople armed with nutritional misinformation preying on an unsuspecting public.”

To protect yourself from nutrition quackery and food faddism, here are some questions you should ask yourself before trying any diet:

Does it have any real advantages over existing or conventional diets? Most fad diets have a gimmick, such as eating grapefruit or using liquid-protein supplements. Do these gimmicks work or are they only a means of attracting attention to the diet?

Is the diet easy to follow? Fasting, for instance, produces a weight loss but it requires a great deal of will power. Most people cannot keep it up for long.

Does the diet provide any long-term modification of eating habits that will allow the weight loss to be maintained after the diet is over? Many diets, such as liquid-protein diets and fasting, and diet aids such as drugs, can produce weight loss. However, because eating behavior is not changed, the person usually regains the weight.

Does the diet present any hazard to health? Very restrictive diets may lead to malnutrition; others, such as liquid-protein diets, have caused injury and even death.

To enhance your diet and exercise program, a good supplement may help. One popular brand is Zylorin that will energize your workouts and speed up your metabolism for maximum fat loss. For details, go to http://www.zylorin.com.